I have tickets for the Washington National Opera‘s production of Salome with Deborah Voigt. It is also the day we remember Saint Theresa – Santa Teresa de Avila – the Spanish mystic.

Not entirely sure how these things are related. In fact, they are very nearly opposites. Salome is a… what? Dancer? Courtesan? Prostitute? Rather than mystical and spiritual, she is eminently a creature of the flesh. And Santa Teresa? Could we relate her ecstatic writings about spiritual unity with the Savior to Salome’s ecstatic “Dance of the Seven Veils” that overwhelmed Herod?